IC-NRLF 


O 


A  LETTER  ON  LINCOLN 

BY 


EDWIN  LVGODKIN 


A  LETTER  ON  LINCOLN 


THIS  LETTER,    WRITTEN    BY    EDWIN    L.     GODKIN    TO 

THE  LONDON  Daily  News,  MARCH  7,    1865,  is 

NOW      REPRINTED    AT    JStllacrc,    RIVERSIDE,     CONN. 


A   LETTER    ON    LINCOLN 


BY 


EDWIN  L.  GODKIN 


THE    HILLACRE    BOOKHOUSE 
RIVERSIDE,  CONN. 

1913 


E457 

Q.55 


f 


A  LETTER   ON   LINCOLN 

WRITTEN    MARCH       TJH,,  l8<K- 


HE' 

has  been  inaug 
urated,  and  has 
delivered  what 
is,  I  suppose,  the 
shortest  "inaug 
ural  address"  on 
record,  probably  for  the  best  of 
all  reasons  —  that  he  had  very 
little  to  say.  He  has  no  new 
policy  to  trace  out,  nothing  to 
explain  that  has  not  been  already 
explained  half-a-dozen  times. 
In  fact  his  real  inaugural  address 
was  his  last  message  to  Congress, 
which  was  written  immediately 


930445 


after  his  election,  and  was  virtu 
ally  his  response  to  the  country. 
What  he  said  last  Saturday  was 
little  more  than  a  formal  ac 
knowledgment  of  the  honor 
which  has.  just  been  conferred  on 
him/  &ttd\ .  though  formal  was 
hearty^  but  what  is  perhaps  bet 
ter  still, '  arid  certainly  rarer,  it 
was  in  excellent  taste.  His  Eng 
lish  is  about  as  good  as  Lord 
Malmesbury's,  but  he  hardly  ever 
says  a  feeble  thing,  and  except 
when  he  undertakes  to  discuss 
questions  of  political  economy, 
which  are  far  out  of  his  depth, 
he  is  invariably  shrewd,  if  not 
wise.  There  is  nothing  in  his 
state  papers,  admirable  as  they 
have  been  in  many  respects,  so 
creditable,  however,  both  to  his 
head  and  heart,  as  the  entire 
absence  of  all  violence,  either  of 


language  or  opinion.  I  believe 
he  has  never  once  been  betrayed 
into  those  paltry  outbursts  of 
passion  and  spite  by  which  near 
ly  everything  that  his  Confeder 
ate  rival  says  or  writes  is  dis 
figured.  Lincoln  never  attempts 
invective,  and,  although  there  is 
probably  no  living  man  who  has 
been  the  object  of  more  black 
guard  abuse,  it  has  never,  so  far 
as  I  know,  elicited  from  him  a 
single  expression  of  impatience 
or  resentment.  I  use  the  term 
"blackguard"  advisedly,  for  I 
believe  he  is  the  first  public  man, 
either  native  or  foreign,  with  re 
gard  to  whom  the  English  press 
has  thrown  aside  those  restraints 
of  which  it  is  ordinarily  and 
justly  so  proud.  The  rules 
which  writers  laying  claim  to 
decency  in  all  countries  agree  to 


observe  have  been  suspended,  by 
many  of  the  most  respectable 
journals,  both  in  England  and 
America,  for  his  annoyance. 
Even  his  dress  and  personal  ap 
pearance  have  been  made  the 
subjects  of  indignant  invectives, 
and  this,  not  by  "the  ruffians 
of  the  press,"  but  by  scholars 
and  gentlemen.  His  humble 
origin  has  been  treated  as  a 
crime  by  men  who  were  actually 
feting  the  grandson  of  a  small 
New  York  tallow-chandler  as  a 
"Southern  cavalier."  His  want 
of  book-learning  has  been  howled 
over  by  men  who  are  opposed  to 
competitive  examinations,  on  the 
ground  that  physical  and  moral 
qualities  are  on  the  whole  more 
important  for  the  public  service 
than  mere  knowledge,  and  who 
think  a  man  may  make  a  very 


good  Indian  civil  servant,  though 
he  may  never  have  heard  of 
Shakspere  or  Milton.  Mr.  Lin 
coln's  acceptance  of  the  Presi 
dency  has  actually  been  treated 
as  a  proof  of  depravity,  and  Mr. 
Beresford  Hope,  in  one  of  those 
extraordinary  outbursts  of  rage 
which  he  called  "lectures'3  on 
the  American  war,  likened  him 
to  the  most  sensual  and  unscrup 
ulous  of  Eastern  tyrants,  appar 
ently  for  the  singular  reason  that 
he  had  not  been  sufficiently  pene 
trated  with  the  sense  of  his  own 
worthlessness  to  decline  an  honor 
conferred  on  him  unasked  by  the 
majority  of  a  nation  of  twenty 
millions.  The  opposition  press 
in  this  country  has,  of  course, 
not  spared  him  either,  though  I 
do  not  remember  to  have  seen 
many  things  in  its  columns  which 


could  be  said  to  surpass  in  sheer 
brutality  much  that  has  been 
written  about  him  in  London. 
And  yet  I  have  never  heard  of 
his  uttering  or  writing  one  word 
to  show  that  these  shameless 
attacks  ever  roused  in  him  a 
single  angry  impulse.  How 
many  men  of  high  breeding  and 
culture  are  there  who  could  pass 
through  a  similar  ordeal  with  as 
much  credit?  His  great  rival, 
Mr.  Davis,  though  an  object  of 
the  highest  admiration  to  half 
Europe  as  well  as  half  America, 
never  makes  a  speech,  or  writes 
a  message  to  Congress,  that  is 
not  half  made  up  of  railing  and 
accusation,  which  sometimes  sink 
into  mere  Billingsgate. 

When  one  comes  to  examine 
what  this  "baboon,"  "buffoon," 
"clodhopper,"  "peasant,"  "rail- 


splitter/'  has  done,  to  compare 
his  promise  of  four  years  ago 
with  his  performance  since  then, 
the  secret  of  his  patience  is  at 
once  revealed.  "They  may 
laugh  who  win."  He  found 
himself  uncouth,  illiterate,  with 
no  experience  of  life,  except  such 
as  could  be  gained  in  one  com 
munity,  and  that  by  no  means  in 
the  most  advanced  state  of  cul 
ture,  without  any  of  the  gifts 
which  usually  captivate  the  peo 
ple,  or  attract  their  confidence, 
either  commanding  presence,  or 
silver  tongue,  or  long  official  ex 
perience,  saddled  suddenly  with 
the  responsibility  of  confronting, 
and  of  directing,  what  everybody 
acknowledges  to  be  the  greatest 
political  convulsion  of  modern 
times.  He  was  placed  at  the 
head  of  a  democracy  in  the  hour 


of  its  greatest  peril,  and  you  must 
not  forget  what  English  philoso 
phers  at  that  time  considered 
it — fickle,  demoralized,  coward 
ly,  unwarlike,  unused  to  arms 
and  to  horsemanship,  impatient 
of  taxation,  incapable  of  dis 
cipline,  singularly  adverse  to  pro 
longed  effort,  without  leaders, 
and  inordinately  conceited  and 
indocile.  Everything  had  to  be 
organized,  and  from  the  rawest 
material  —  army,  navy,  and  civil 
service.  The  task  before  this 
railsplitter  was  in  short  such  as 
no  European  statesman  has  ever 
faced,  and  every  foreign  observer 
and  a  great  many  native  ones 
were  confident  he  would  fail. 
Three  things  were  predicted 
with  the  utmost  certainty  — 
that  he  would  never  be  able  to 
raise  a  second  army;  that  he 


would  never  be  able  to  raise  any 
considerable  portion  of  the  rev 
enue  by  taxation;  and  that  if  he 
attempted  to  do  either  of  these 
things  by  force,  the  Western 
States  would  secede,  and  either 
set  up  a  separate  Confederation 
or  join  that  of  the  South. 

Well,  he  has  raised  army  after 
army,  fully  a  million  and  a  half 
of  men  in  all ;  he  has  equipped 
one  of  the  largest,  perhaps,  in 
the  number  of  guns  and  men, 
the  largest  navy  in  the  world; 
he  is  at  this  moment  raising 
nearly  ^100,000,000  by  inland 
revenue  alone,  and  after  four 
years  of  murderous  warfare,  con 
ducted  with  varying  success,  he 
has,  nevertheless,  managed  to  in 
spire  such  confidence  in  the 
nation,  of  which  he  has  exacted 
such  sacrifices,  that  he  has  been 


re-elected  by  an  almost  unani 
mous  vote,  the  Western  States 
casting  the  heaviest  majorities  in 
his  favor,  to  the  highest  office 
in  their  gift.  There  is  something 
almost  painfully  absurd  in  the 
spectacle  of  writers  and  orators 
in  London,  who  are  probably 
themselves  incapable  of  manag 
ing  a  parish  vestry,  laboriously 
proving,  in  the  teeth  of  all  this, 
Mr.  Lincoln's  incompetency. 
The  final  test  of  his  statesman 
ship  will,  of  course,  be  the  condi 
tion  and  prospects  of  the  South 
ten  years  hence;  but  every  other 
test  short  of  this  has  been  applied 
to  him,  and  it  is  difficult  to  con 
ceive  of  any  man's  bearing  it 
more  successfully  under  all  the 
circumstances.  A  long  catalogue 
of  the  things  that  he  might  have 
done,  but  has  failed  to  do,  and 


of  other  and  better  ways  of  do 
ing  the  things  he  has  done, 
might  of  course,  be  made  out; 
but  there  are  few  persons  who 
have  studied  the  lives  of  men 
who  have  successfully  carried 
nations  through  great  revolutions 
who  will  not  agree  that  this 
would  be  one  of  the  least  pro 
fitable  of  exercises.  Nobody  can 
ever  predict  with  certainty  what 
the  precise  consequence  of  any 
political  or  military  step  will  be, 
or  whether  it  will  have  only  one 
or  many  consequences,  and  as  long 
as  this  is  the  case  it  will  be  fool 
ish  as  well  as  unjust  to  condemn 
any  public  man  who  has  actually 
done  well,  for  not  having  accom 
plished  things  which  bystanders 
conceive  as  possibilities.  Two- 
thirds  of  the  criticism  of  Mr. 
Lincoln  is  about  as  sage  as  the 


recent  announcement  of  the 
Times,  that  Grant  would  have 
been  certainly  defeated  in  the 
Wilderness  if  a  flank  movement 
undertaken  by  Longstreet  had 
not  been  prevented  by  that  gen 
eral  receiving  a  wound  at  the 
hands  of  his  own  men  ;  and  like 
the  young  officer  who  narrowly 
escaped  death  at  Dettingen  by 
being  sent  fifteen  miles  away  the 
night  before  the  battle.  Mr. 
Lincoln  promised  in  his  first 
inaugural,  in  1861,  that  the 
power  confided  to  him  would  be 
used  to  hold,  occupy,  or  possess 
the  property  and  places  belong 
ing  to  the  Government,  and  col 
lect  the  duties  and  imposts;  but 
beyond  what  may  be  necessary 
for  these  objects  there  will  be 
no  invasion,  no  using  of  force 
against  or  among  the  people  any- 


where.  He  added  afterwards: 
"  The  course  here  indicated  will 
be  followed,  unless  current  events 
and  experience  shall  show  a 
modification  or  change  to  be 
proper."  This,  it  must  be  ad 
mitted,  is  a  modest  programme, 
and  was  traced  out  under  a  very 
mistaken  impression  of  the  mag 
nitude  of  the  task  before  him; 
but  he  has  not  only  done  all  he 
promised,  but  very  much  more 
than  any  one,  when  the  full  pro 
portions  of  the  rebellion  had 
been  fully  revealed,  could  have 
believed  it  was  possible  for  him 
to  do  in  the  time.  What  this 
is  any  one  may  ascertain  by  con 
trasting  the  condition  of  the 
Confederacy  in  the  spring  of  1 863 
with  what  it  is  to-day.  He  has, 
perhaps,  a  stronger  claim,  how 
ever,  on  the  popular  confidence 


and  gratitude  than  that  which 
arises  out  of  the  positive  results 
which  he  has  achieved.  It  is 
based  on  the  fact  that  he  is  per 
haps  the  only  man  at  the  North 
who  has  never  wavered,  or 
doubted,  or  abated  one  jot  of 
heart  or  hope.  He  has  been 
always  calm,  confident,  determin 
ed;  the  very  type  and  embodi 
ment  of  the  national  will,  the 
true  and  fit  representative  of  the 
people  in  its  noblest  moods ;  and 
to  be  this  is  certainly  one  of  the 
highest  duties,  if  not  the  highest 
duty,  of  the  leader  of  democracy. 


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